May 2024 Grocery Challenge

Soontobeoap

Spent £18.00 in m and S. Wouldnt normally shop there but parked in their car park to nip to the chemist quickly. Bought some chocolate mousses to try and get DH eating and a treat wrap for my lunch oh and a reduced apple crumble thing for the freezer. How was that £18.00?

Thank you for kind messages for DH. Gp has now got involved and is doing lots of tests so should know more soon. 

veggielove

Hello all, we are a family of 4. 2 adults 2 kids. Kids are not good eaters and 1 is worse than other (Autism) so I have been spending unlimited amounts( I have no idea how much)  on food and I wasn't able to stick to a much needed budget to get out of debt again. I cant cook for us all. Its me and husband the kids each eat a different meal... No choice in this. 

We are less than a year into being first time home owners. CC debt around 800 and 3 loans totalling around 9000 all in  (1 is zero interest finance loan for a large furniture outlet )

The kids always want magazines( like a fiver a go) and toys at shop and obviously chocolate, meltdown if its a no (it is a no when we are skint weeks ) but I treat them far too much when the money is sitting there.

I have started having the shopping delivered now (usually a Sunday so we have food in for the week) I think a realistic budget will be 130-150 a week for food, toiletries, cleaning etc, nappies too. I always have to do a top up mid week though (bread, snacks, meat or whatever, veg/salad items) 

Suffolk_lass

goldfinches said:

I spent an eye popping £25.24 in Sainsby's on olive oil, spring onions, fine beans, instant coffee and loo rim block. I know I could do without the loo block but it took me half an hour to clean the accumulated limescale from the pan on Sunday morning which I did not enjoy so I decided to buy the rim block on offer to see if it would help. Then I had to go on to Mark's to get silken tofu and frozen petits pois which came to £3.85.
The Baking Budget spent £4.25 in Sainsby's on digestive biscuits, unsalted butter and unwaxed lemons and then spent £3.80 in Marks on eggs.

That makes my new total for the main budget £84.16/£150 which is an average daily spend of £6.01. 
The Baking Budget now stands at £19.30/£25 which is an average spend of £6.43 per Wednesday.

PS I meant to say that £16.10 of the Sainsby's spend was on the olive oil and I've decided that rather than swapping to a cheaper oil I'm not sure I'll like the taste of, I'll reduce the amount of oil I use in any recipe I make.

I just wanted to mention that citric acid in very hot water instantly removes limescale (eg, lift off cistern lid and pour over the handle mechanism and watch it disappear, to cure a seizing up handle). In a spray bottle it will do the same in the toilet

otb666

@goldfinches After years of trying various cleaning methods for a positively horrendous limescale I now empty the toilet of water using a big sponge and then i have found the pummy stones on a string are soft enough to remove limescale and not damage or mark toilet.  Dont use the normal hard pummy stones they will mark the toilet and remember to remove the limescale otherwise it will just settle on bottom again.  @Suffolk_lass what citrus acid do you use?  I now only have to do this once a fortnight now.  

otb666

@veggielove I saw a programme on tv, cant remember which one.  They showed what school dinners the french kids have and it was tomato soup for starter then veg+bean  pasta and mint mouse for afters.  The tomatoes they did in the veg+bean dish then scouped out and mashed up.  It was very good and cheap when you think about ingredients. The librarys are a very good resouse  and free.  The CS have loads of good toys that are a lot cheaper I recently bought £2 toy there that costs £18 in shops.  I wish i had done things cheaper when my were younger but its easier said then done is nt it.  You are doing a fantastic job

goldfinches

@Soontobeoap - hope your OH is eating now and that the test results are quick as well as good.
@Suffolk_lass and @otb666 - thankyou for the helpful tips for limescale removal from the loo, I shall try the citric acid one first because it sounds so much easier to do.
@veggielove - having deliveries sounds like a good way of avoiding the extra treating and/or meltdowns and I expect you might find it easier to stick to your list when the supermarket aren't using their ways of increasing what you put in the trolley on you too. Like @otb666 I wish I'd spent more time in charity shops and libraries when I was younger but I do agree with her that you're doing a fantastic job at juggling everything for your family.

I'm going to be spending some time in an area of the city I don't usually visit tomorrow morning while I wait for my bicycle to be serviced so I'm looking forward to having a mooch round the three or four asian supermarkets along that road and, if necessary, I shall be assigning my spend to the treats budget rather than the GC one, but we shall see if I can restrain my acquisitive urges or not. 

Suffolk_lass

otb666 said:

@goldfinches After years of trying various cleaning methods for a positively horrendous limescale I now empty the toilet of water using a big sponge and then i have found the pummy stones on a string are soft enough to remove limescale and not damage or mark toilet.  Dont use the normal hard pummy stones they will mark the toilet and remember to remove the limescale otherwise it will just settle on bottom again.  @Suffolk_lass what citrus acid do you use?  I now only have to do this once a fortnight now.  

@otb666 initially I bought a little pot from Wilkinsons, along with Campden tablets ( I was making cordial as per Mary Berry's elderflower cordial recipe), then a bag from my local health food shop when I realised they sold it cheaper. For cleaning though, I buy a kilo pack from the big river company as a six monthly subscription (15% off!) - I always buy the slightly more expensive food grade, as I use it for both and can't be doing with having two lots.

I'm only showing all three as I'm guessing someone trying it for cleaning won't want to pay around a fiver to try something out, so maybe a bag from your health food shop to try it out.

I also de-fur my kettle with a tablespoonful in the bottom of a hot kettle with maybe a centimetre of just boiled water (don't inhale the fumes) swill it up the sides and it just fizzes away the limescale in less than a minute, then I pour the residue over a plughole in the washbasin in the downstairs loo, so the plunger and rim style plug lose their limescale/soap-scum coating too. Then I rinse thoroughly. Kettle and washbasin. Be aware that in strong concentrations it is mildly corrosive to stainless steel but I don't let it sit and soak like you do with vinegar.

PipneyJane

Suffolk_lass said:

Bought half a lamb, that was reared here in our village, and had a good life. Paid a little more than normal, but it is once a year

I wish I had the space in the freezer, so that I could do this.  Mind you, I used to fantasise about the expression on our old butcher’s face if I put in an order for a forequarter of beef. I never did it because we don’t have the space for a chest freezer, but he’d have been shocked!

As it is, when driving back from Scotland on Sunday, we indulged the Meat Fund in the purchase of a boned, whole leg of mutton from the farmshop at Tebay Services.  £49.71 spent on 3kg of mutton, which they kindly cut in half for us, so that a) we now have two roasts, and b) it would fit in our freezer.  It will make at least 6 meals for us, 2 roast dinners plus 4 curries/stir-fries/stews, all designed to produce at least 4 portions.  Oh, and they kindly gave us a load of ice-packs - for free - to help us transport the meat safely home.

If I lived closer, they’d be my butcher.

I have two spends to declare from yesterday. £31.57 in L!dl and £5.39 on loose, fresh veg in Sainsbugs.  

The L!dl spend was on 1kg Porridge oats 90p (up from 75p last year), corn dogs 2x£4.99, spring onions 59p, Salmon En Croute £4.49, lactose free skimmed milk 1L 4x99p, butter 3x£1.69, Garlic & herb cream cheese 2x£85, Oaties 2x77p, baking powder 170g 65p and 12 large FR eggs £2.69.  We really didn’t need the corn dogs but, despite several trips to the US, I’ve never had them and they’re a bucket-list item from my teenage years reading Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew.

The above brings our total May spend to £134.76/£160 leaving £25.24 for the rest of the month.

For us, that should be do-able.  We will have to purchase more fresh veg - especially onions, which I forgot to add to the shopping list - but that’ll be it.  The pantry is full of dried goods. We’ve restocked the fridge on a few items (cream cheese, butter, eggs, lactose-free milk) and the freezer is full to overflowing.  While not cheap at 99p/litre, lactose-free milk tastes fresh and keeps for ages; yesterday’s purchases are dated 25th June! 

I still have to work out a meal plan for the next few days.  There’s a tub of plain yoghurt that needs to be used, so a fish curry is on the horizon, and to fit everything into the freezer yesterday, I had to take out a haggis to defrost.  Plus we have a couple of ropey carrots, so I was thinking of doing a Carrot & Cashew Nut Roast, which will also use up some of the disastrous loaf of bread I made earlier this month.  Hmmm….

- Pip

Suffolk_lass

Blimey! Done my monthly big shop for May and GC is sitting at £80.16 with stores at £188.61 thanks to that half a lamb. Subscriptions so far is running at £15 which is all milkman, but I have one or two things being delivered next week too, as part of my big river subscriptions. It should be £4.64 Groceries and £31.69 store-cupboard, including several months of water filter supplies AND, with 15% discount applied (blue shrieky thing emoji [I do miss it!])

I'm with you on quality meat @PipneyJane, with my £100 including eight roasting joints (including a French trim mini rack), with shoulders and legs cut in half, the shanks are big enough to roast as small leg joints (I'm sure he was a hogget) and the rest as pairs of chops, a bag of bones and three bags of offal (I said it was my sharers' turn for the heart this time)

goldfinches

@Suffolk_lass thankyou for the information about how to use the citric acid, I have bought a small packet at an Asian supermarket this morning with the aim of trying it to see if it was better than vinegar or those expensive plastic sachets so your post is very timely.
I also bought some very low fat and low priced yoghurt to try, some tinned spinach for the store cupboard, dried soya chunks again for the store cupboard, a packet of fenugreek rotis, a huge bunch of coriander and some lovely ripe tomatoes which all came to £10.48.
Considering how many interesting and delicious looking things there were on the shelves I think I managed to get off quite lightly, I could easily have spent 4 times as much especially on the huge bags of nuts on special offer but I firmly told myself that "there is no space in the freezer and they'd go off before I could finish the bag so don't buy them".

That makes my new total £94.64/£150 which is an average daily spend of £5.91 which is a bit better but not much, I shall have to try harder to use up what I already have and not buy more unless it is really necessary.